More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
As soon as I saw this poll (with a very modest difference) I knew OGH would write a thread header on it!
Unprecedented for OGH to do threads on polls.
Nah. Minor differences in how Leavers and Remainers face different ways in the shower, or how they wash their underpants, are the very definition of utterly banal trivia but such narcissisms excite certain people.
Has to be said, their recent hysterical behaviour over inter alia vaccines strongly suggests the first.
No, the vaccines response was because they knew they had screwed up in a matter of the highest importance.
And, although we'll never know, I would not be shocked if there was a gap between what salesmen told the EU Commission and the contractual reality. Not a lie, of course, but incomplete truths, and enough for the EU to be justified in their pissed-offness.
(Simplest explanation of the events is that the EU simply didn't anticipate the details of the Hancock Contact, so didn't ask the right question. And AZ understandably didn't tell.)
Anyone in business knows that that is an all too common occurrence: salesperson sells vision to executive, the contract is reviewed by legal and assumes it matches what was discussed, later much unhappiness that contract and conversation are in no way aligned.
Although in this case I think it was probably more that the EU Commission was naive about the difficulties of ramping up production so fast. I bet Kate Bingham was a hell of a lot more realistic about the risk of delays, since she had good experience of other companies bringing new pharma products on stream. And, to be fair, UvdL has pretty much admitted this, once she'd stopped throwing her toys out of the pram in our direction.
I agree.
The UK's performance - and good sense - in encouraging, supporting and subsidising domestic production via long-term well priced contracts was exemplary. And it severely embarrassed the Commission, who responded very poorly.
What should now happen is that those responsible at the Commission (including the boss herself) are replaced. It was a monumental failure and those involved should pay with their jobs.
This would (hopefully) also allow a resetting of relationship.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
Has to be said, their recent hysterical behaviour over inter alia vaccines strongly suggests the first.
No, the vaccines response was because they knew they had screwed up in a matter of the highest importance.
And, although we'll never know, I would not be shocked if there was a gap between what salesmen told the EU Commission and the contractual reality. Not a lie, of course, but incomplete truths, and enough for the EU to be justified in their pissed-offness.
(Simplest explanation of the events is that the EU simply didn't anticipate the details of the Hancock Contact, so didn't ask the right question. And AZ understandably didn't tell.)
Anyone in business knows that that is an all too common occurrence: salesperson sells vision to executive, the contract is reviewed by legal and assumes it matches what was discussed, later much unhappiness that contract and conversation are in no way aligned.
Although in this case I think it was probably more that the EU Commission was naive about the difficulties of ramping up production so fast. I bet Kate Bingham was a hell of a lot more realistic about the risk of delays, since she had good experience of other companies bringing new pharma products on stream. And, to be fair, UvdL has pretty much admitted this, once she'd stopped throwing her toys out of the pram in our direction.
Not that I want to do down the efforts of the JCVI, but even without any knowledge of the sector, I'd like to think I'd have at least asked the vaccine producers what can go wrong and what can we do to help mitigate the risks etc.?
The EU seemed to think that they were just buying a standard product off the shelf.
The lobbying referred are not “recent revaluations” though. It’s something that appears with regularity in the press every decade or two. I remember writing about this in a constitutional law essay in the 90s and mentioning this episode.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
The EU wants Brexit to be a failure, partly due to their insecurities, partly to encourage the others... and partly too, because they think that the UK now wants the EU to fail.
Peter Bone doesn't get much publicity here: but in the EU they see a member of Parliament of the ruling party calling for the EU to collapse. That is a story, and it gets peoples' backs up just as much there as "punishment beatings" lines from German MEPs get backs up here.
And then there are things like the EU having an Embassy and an Ambassador. The EU says "hang on, pretty much everywhere else allows us representation, and the UK says f*ck off".
It reminds me a little of a friend of a friend, who changed their name to something utterly absurd. Lots of my friends, said "fuck that, that's really stupid. I'm not changing what I call them". And I said "it doesn't cost me anything, and it's important to them, so I'll call them what they want to be called."
So, yeah, the EU is behaving badly. But this is a co-created relationship.
Sure. The Ambassador thing was petty and pointless.
However, I think their attitude to us is more aggressively negative than ours to them, because it has to be. They have the incentive: to keep the EU together by proving Brexit is a disaster. What incentive do we have to be nasty and menacing to them, other than residual, and idiotic EU-hatred by a few Peter Bones? We're out, we've left, most eurosceptics are relieved, and now just want to get on and trade happily with our new neighbours.
Their motives are different. I predict the EU will remain combatively unpleasant to the UK, obstructionist, awkward, surly, unedifying.
The trouble is this WILL quickly provoke the same, in reverse, from the UK, and the whole relationship will go into the freezer for a decade. I bet the EU will be demanding Brits on holiday in Spain carry special £300 visas by about 2025. They will self harm, as long as it harms us more.
Maybe war is the answer. Or the Anglosphere Alliance of Awesomness with Nukes.
I think we're in the middle of a negative feedback loop, and I don't see how we get out of it without a change in personalities.
Positive feedback loop, please! A negative feedback loop is exactly what we need!
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
Yes, it’s a really clever idea to further piss off your largest trading partner just at the moment you’re trying to exploit their mistakes to wring further concessions from them.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Politico.com - Newsom shifts into defense mode as California recall takes shape If the recall qualifies, the governor could find himself in campaign mode for the next two years while trying to navigate the state through crisis.
People want more than a 'Standard Life', they want a really good life, fantastic life.
Many years ago I knew a few remortgaging companies renamed themselves from [Company Name] Finance to [Company Name] Mortgages.
People saw finance as a high interest loan that gambles with the future, whereas mortgage was seen as an investment/risk free thing because people wanted to own their own home.
Frankly after the advent of the coronavirus I'm finding it a little difficult to get too innervated about the minutiae of UK-EU relations, or very much else. I'd be happy just to be rid of lockdowns and to have some reasonable expectation that they won't come back.
Brexit has not resulted in societal collapse or anything resembling it, we'll work through all the problems in time, and the Sun will still rise in the morning and set in the evening.
Beyond that, leaving the European Union is a major geopolitical act of reorientation for the UK, which presents challenges and opportunities that Governments well beyond the current one will need to come to terms with. It may be decades before we know how well or otherwise it has worked out.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
I think the UK is already pretty hostile to the EU. Ultimately a carefully calibrated level of crap is the solution, or at least the probable eventual outcome on my baseline expectation. But it could take years to settle. Disaster isn't in the EU's interest.
I have come to the conclusion that the U.K. will *always* be hostile to the EU, against its best interests, through sheer pettiness, spite and jealousy.
The EU’s animus towards the U.K. is probably more of a temporary phenomenon caused by embarrassment and fear. It will be easier for them to “be reasonable” because the U.K. is just less important to them.
I think this is wrong. For there to be a major democratic state in Europe that's completely outside the EU will be seen as a permanent threat to their legitimacy. This effect has been somewhat masked because during the negotiations they were able to paint the UK as a country led by buffoons making a self-inflicted mistake, but the reaction to the UK's better performance on vaccines shows the underlying dynamics more clearly.
We're all agreeing here that the EU is deliberately treating the UK differently because it wants it to fail. The question is whether we should seriously engage with that on those terms.
I say, no. The UK is big, ugly and smelly enough to take care of itself and, yes, we'll no longer be an EU distribution and trading hub for continental Europe - and there'll be some pain and dislocation as a consequence of market recalibration - but that doesn't mean we can't do perfectly well ourselves through finding a new global niche.
We can't be brought to heel unless we want to be. And I don't think most people here want to be.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I don't see Ireland as an option there. Strange omission, given our closer links and shared land border with Ireland.
I would have said Ireland but otherwise agreed with the list there in pretty much roughly that order, given Ireland wasn't an option I wouldn't have said the EU as a whole.
The primary reason RBS Group changed their name to the NatWest Group was because the public associate RBS with the bank bailouts during the GFC but they don't associate NatWest with that.
Was a real nightmare for the debt collection departments in Brindley Place.
Customers were like 'We bailed you out when you were in trouble, how about doing the same for us?'
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
I think the UK is already pretty hostile to the EU. Ultimately a carefully calibrated level of crap is the solution, or at least the probable eventual outcome on my baseline expectation. But it could take years to settle. Disaster isn't in the EU's interest.
I have come to the conclusion that the U.K. will *always* be hostile to the EU, against its best interests, through sheer pettiness, spite and jealousy.
The EU’s animus towards the U.K. is probably more of a temporary phenomenon caused by embarrassment and fear. It will be easier for them to “be reasonable” because the U.K. is just less important to them.
Only while we have a Conservative government. Quite obviously Labour should have a more constructive approach to the EU as per @Richard_Nabavi as a policy at the next GE, short of rejoining the SM.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
India and Pakistan say hello.
Pakistan a democratic entity? Well, mostly. But '58, '77 and '99 called and asked not to be forgotten. India's come close but never quite lost it.
Indira Gandhi?
The Emergency was where India came close to a dictatorship but I think, by its fingernails, it remained a democracy, albeit extremely flawed for a time. I base that on the fact that not only did Congress get thumped at the next election, she lost her seat, so the electorate could and did repudiate her policies of the period - and with extreme prejudice.
My Sikh friends maintain India ceased to be a democracy the day when Rajiv Gandhi said 'when a big tree falls, the earth shakes' after the anti Sikh riots.
Reinforced by the events after the demolition of the Babri mosque.
I was doing my gap teaching in Rajasthan when they tore down the Babri mosque. I wasn’t sure what the fuss was about until my Mother, in the way only Mothers can, managed to look up the only phone line into the village where I was teaching and get out through to my school to talk to me as it was top news on the BBC back home. My plans for a post Christmas trip round India after term ended dashed as I kept getting stuck in curfews. Not as long lasting but he closest thing to our current experience I have ever had.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
I like Aberdeen. I like the crispness of the granite with the gothic splendour of the place.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
I last went in 2015, neither EE nor o2 was working.
My previous visits in I think 2006 and 2008 were marred by poor mobile coverage but in those days data usage wasn't much of an issue.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Its silly but there's too much hurt feelings and water under the bridge now to just brush it off.
People who've lost their minds like UVDL need to burn through their anger before they can calm down. We need to just deal with it as it is, not as we want it to be.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I don't see Ireland as an option there. Strange omission, given our closer links and shared land border with Ireland.
I would have said Ireland but otherwise agreed with the list there in pretty much roughly that order, given Ireland wasn't an option I wouldn't have said the EU as a whole.
Would Ireland not come under countries people in britain regularly travel to and countries whose citizens regularly travel to and countries with close historical and cultural links to britain?
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
Perhaps he means the electoral consequences of squandering Scottish taxpayers' hard-earned on holding the world's biggest opinion poll whilst the country is on its knees from Covid.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
I like Aberdeen. I like the crispness of the granite with the gothic splendour of the place.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I don't see Ireland as an option there. Strange omission, given our closer links and shared land border with Ireland.
I would have said Ireland but otherwise agreed with the list there in pretty much roughly that order, given Ireland wasn't an option I wouldn't have said the EU as a whole.
Would Ireland not come under countries people in britain regularly travel to and countries whose citizens regularly travel to and countries with close historical and cultural links to britain?
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
I think the UK is already pretty hostile to the EU. Ultimately a carefully calibrated level of crap is the solution, or at least the probable eventual outcome on my baseline expectation. But it could take years to settle. Disaster isn't in the EU's interest.
I have come to the conclusion that the U.K. will *always* be hostile to the EU, against its best interests, through sheer pettiness, spite and jealousy.
The EU’s animus towards the U.K. is probably more of a temporary phenomenon caused by embarrassment and fear. It will be easier for them to “be reasonable” because the U.K. is just less important to them.
I think this is wrong. For there to be a major democratic state in Europe that's completely outside the EU will be seen as a permanent threat to their legitimacy. This effect has been somewhat masked because during the negotiations they were able to paint the UK as a country led by buffoons making a self-inflicted mistake, but the reaction to the UK's better performance on vaccines shows the underlying dynamics more clearly.
We're all agreeing here that the EU is deliberately treating the UK differently because it wants it to fail. The question is whether we should seriously engage with that on those terms.
I say, no. The UK is big, ugly and smelly enough to take care of itself and, yes, we'll no longer be an EU distribution and trading hub for continental Europe - and there'll be some pain and dislocation as a consequence of market recalibration - but that doesn't mean we can't do perfectly well ourselves through finding a new global niche.
We can't be brought to heel unless we want to be. And I don't think most people here want to be.
Needlessly emotive. They will just make sure we don't get the benefits of membership as non members. We will prosper if the benefits of non membership outweigh that. Which imo they won't. But you never know.
People want more than a 'Standard Life', they want a really good life, fantastic life.
Many years ago I knew a few remortgaging companies renamed themselves from [Company Name] Finance to [Company Name] Mortgages.
People saw finance as a high interest loan that gambles with the future, whereas mortgage was seen as an investment/risk free thing because people wanted to own their own home.
It was like the Standard-Triumph motor company dropping the first part of the name.
At creation "Standard" meant "setting the standard" as we still use in for example "Gold Standard". It later came to mean standard, in the sense of ordinary, as in "bog standard".
It is how language evolves, by hyperbolisation, and euphemism.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
Mate, really?
You spent most of the last decade talking about the iniquity of our unelected rulers, you've awoken something in the country, the Royals are rightly next in line.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
I like Aberdeen. I like the crispness of the granite with the gothic splendour of the place.
The Malmaison hotel is fantastic.
I was in a serviced apartment in Belmont Street when I stayed. It's nice. There's a nice tea shop around there (forget the name) with great cake. The new modern art gallery (despite being a construction project beset with issues) is very cool too. I'm looking forward to returning when lockdown is over. I'm looking forward to going anywhere when lockdown is over being honest.
Has to be said, their recent hysterical behaviour over inter alia vaccines strongly suggests the first.
No, the vaccines response was because they knew they had screwed up in a matter of the highest importance.
And, although we'll never know, I would not be shocked if there was a gap between what salesmen told the EU Commission and the contractual reality. Not a lie, of course, but incomplete truths, and enough for the EU to be justified in their pissed-offness.
(Simplest explanation of the events is that the EU simply didn't anticipate the details of the Hancock Contact, so didn't ask the right question. And AZ understandably didn't tell.)
Anyone in business knows that that is an all too common occurrence: salesperson sells vision to executive, the contract is reviewed by legal and assumes it matches what was discussed, later much unhappiness that contract and conversation are in no way aligned.
Although in this case I think it was probably more that the EU Commission was naive about the difficulties of ramping up production so fast. I bet Kate Bingham was a hell of a lot more realistic about the risk of delays, since she had good experience of other companies bringing new pharma products on stream. And, to be fair, UvdL has pretty much admitted this, once she'd stopped throwing her toys out of the pram in our direction.
I agree.
The UK's performance - and good sense - in encouraging, supporting and subsidising domestic production via long-term well priced contracts was exemplary. And it severely embarrassed the Commission, who responded very poorly.
What should now happen is that those responsible at the Commission (including the boss herself) are replaced. It was a monumental failure and those involved should pay with their jobs.
This would (hopefully) also allow a resetting of relationship.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
I like Aberdeen. I like the crispness of the granite with the gothic splendour of the place.
It's its own place right enough, if that's not a clunking truism. Took me a long time not to think of it as my home town.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
Mate, really?
You spent most of the last decade talking about the iniquity of our unelected rulers, you've awoken something in the country, the Royals are rightly next in line.
For me the biggest moment of peril for the monarchy will be with the Queen's passing
It may surprise some I have been a Republican most all my life but of recent years I have recognised the Queen's value and work ethics, but I am no fan of Charles and Camilla
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I don't see Ireland as an option there. Strange omission, given our closer links and shared land border with Ireland.
I would have said Ireland but otherwise agreed with the list there in pretty much roughly that order, given Ireland wasn't an option I wouldn't have said the EU as a whole.
Would Ireland not come under countries people in britain regularly travel to and countries whose citizens regularly travel to and countries with close historical and cultural links to britain?
They'd come under many categories but those categories don't mean Ireland.
Its an all dogs are animals but not all animals are dogs problem.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
I think the UK is already pretty hostile to the EU. Ultimately a carefully calibrated level of crap is the solution, or at least the probable eventual outcome on my baseline expectation. But it could take years to settle. Disaster isn't in the EU's interest.
I have come to the conclusion that the U.K. will *always* be hostile to the EU, against its best interests, through sheer pettiness, spite and jealousy.
The EU’s animus towards the U.K. is probably more of a temporary phenomenon caused by embarrassment and fear. It will be easier for them to “be reasonable” because the U.K. is just less important to them.
I think this is wrong. For there to be a major democratic state in Europe that's completely outside the EU will be seen as a permanent threat to their legitimacy. This effect has been somewhat masked because during the negotiations they were able to paint the UK as a country led by buffoons making a self-inflicted mistake, but the reaction to the UK's better performance on vaccines shows the underlying dynamics more clearly.
We're all agreeing here that the EU is deliberately treating the UK differently because it wants it to fail. The question is whether we should seriously engage with that on those terms.
I say, no. The UK is big, ugly and smelly enough to take care of itself and, yes, we'll no longer be an EU distribution and trading hub for continental Europe - and there'll be some pain and dislocation as a consequence of market recalibration - but that doesn't mean we can't do perfectly well ourselves through finding a new global niche.
We can't be brought to heel unless we want to be. And I don't think most people here want to be.
Needlessly emotive. They will just make sure we don't get the benefits of membership as non members. We will prosper if the benefits of non membership outweigh that. Which imo they won't. But you never know.
We will prosper regardless. The debate is about the "rate" at which our "richness" increased, which is chock full of assumptions - all you can really say with any certainty is that increasing trade barriers between the UK and EU (which Brexit undoubtedly does) increases frictional costs.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
How many seats would a party based solely on Thatcherite economics - shorn of the cultural conservatism of which the monarchy is the linchpin - actually win these days? How many would Thatcher herself have won? The loss of the institution would be a major blow to the right-of-centre (and perhaps the centre too), including the people who just want lower taxes and don't much care about anything else. It's a bizarre and self-defeating position for anyone not firmly on the left.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
I like Aberdeen. I like the crispness of the granite with the gothic splendour of the place.
It's its own place right enough, if that's not a clunking truism. Took me a long time not to think of it as my home town.
It is one of my top three British cities after Lincoln and Chester. Prior to the epidemic I spent more than half my year up there staying in serviced apartments or hotels. It is a great city with some cracking restaurants. I would highly recommend it as a base for exploring North East Scotland. The new work they have done around Marischal College is really good as well.
Has to be said, their recent hysterical behaviour over inter alia vaccines strongly suggests the first.
No, the vaccines response was because they knew they had screwed up in a matter of the highest importance.
And, although we'll never know, I would not be shocked if there was a gap between what salesmen told the EU Commission and the contractual reality. Not a lie, of course, but incomplete truths, and enough for the EU to be justified in their pissed-offness.
(Simplest explanation of the events is that the EU simply didn't anticipate the details of the Hancock Contact, so didn't ask the right question. And AZ understandably didn't tell.)
Anyone in business knows that that is an all too common occurrence: salesperson sells vision to executive, the contract is reviewed by legal and assumes it matches what was discussed, later much unhappiness that contract and conversation are in no way aligned.
Although in this case I think it was probably more that the EU Commission was naive about the difficulties of ramping up production so fast. I bet Kate Bingham was a hell of a lot more realistic about the risk of delays, since she had good experience of other companies bringing new pharma products on stream. And, to be fair, UvdL has pretty much admitted this, once she'd stopped throwing her toys out of the pram in our direction.
I agree.
The UK's performance - and good sense - in encouraging, supporting and subsidising domestic production via long-term well priced contracts was exemplary. And it severely embarrassed the Commission, who responded very poorly.
What should now happen is that those responsible at the Commission (including the boss herself) are replaced. It was a monumental failure and those involved should pay with their jobs.
This would (hopefully) also allow a resetting of relationship.
Poor Canada, they're in a much worse place in all of this than the EU. Various errors compounded by revenge-motivated export blocking by the Chinese, insofar as I understand it.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
I like Aberdeen. I like the crispness of the granite with the gothic splendour of the place.
The Malmaison hotel is fantastic.
Agreed. That glass floor over the wine cellar is amazing. And it is just the right distance from the city centre that you can have a nice stroll in of an evening.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I don't see Ireland as an option there. Strange omission, given our closer links and shared land border with Ireland.
I would have said Ireland but otherwise agreed with the list there in pretty much roughly that order, given Ireland wasn't an option I wouldn't have said the EU as a whole.
Would Ireland not come under countries people in britain regularly travel to and countries whose citizens regularly travel to and countries with close historical and cultural links to britain?
It also comes under “The European Union”
It does, but imo it should have been made its own option. There are clear and compelling reasons for it to be the next priority.
By the way, I would like to reiterate that MaxPB's idea of us making ROI part of our vaccination programme and offering it as part of our travel area for people to go on their holibobs (and vice versa) was an excellent idea that someone should wisper in Bojo's ear.
It would be popular with everyone - EUphiles who can cross over to the Emerald Isle for a breath of EU civilisation and a chance to spend wonderful euros, Scottish nationalists who can go over and bore people in pubs about the hated English, people who just want to 'fly' and go somewhere different and would miss this otherwise, the British tourism industry who'd get an influx of Irish tourists, Belfast, who'd get lots of people visiting the Titanic exhibition - it would really save summer for many.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
India and Pakistan say hello.
Pakistan a democratic entity? Well, mostly. But '58, '77 and '99 called and asked not to be forgotten. India's come close but never quite lost it.
Indira Gandhi?
The Emergency was where India came close to a dictatorship but I think, by its fingernails, it remained a democracy, albeit extremely flawed for a time. I base that on the fact that not only did Congress get thumped at the next election, she lost her seat, so the electorate could and did repudiate her policies of the period - and with extreme prejudice.
My Sikh friends maintain India ceased to be a democracy the day when Rajiv Gandhi said 'when a big tree falls, the earth shakes' after the anti Sikh riots.
Reinforced by the events after the demolition of the Babri mosque.
I was doing my gap teaching in Rajasthan when they tore down the Babri mosque. I wasn’t sure what the fuss was about until my Mother, in the way only Mothers can, managed to look up the only phone line into the village where I was teaching and get out through to my school to talk to me as it was top news on the BBC back home. My plans for a post Christmas trip round India after term ended dashed as I kept getting stuck in curfews. Not as long lasting but he closest thing to our current experience I have ever had.
That must have been 1990. I was in NZ at the time, and planning to tour India on the way home. The curfews, riots and strikes made me change my plans too, so went to Borneo and Indonesia instead.
Muslim conquerors did have a bit of a tendency to build on existing holy sites in order to stamp out existing religions. The Hagia Sofia and Al Asqa mosque on Solomon temple being other examples. Mind you, Christians have done the same too, such as In Andulucia.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
I like Aberdeen. I like the crispness of the granite with the gothic splendour of the place.
The Malmaison hotel is fantastic.
I was in a serviced apartment in Belmont Street when I stayed. It's nice. There's a nice tea shop around there (forget the name) with great cake. The new modern art gallery (despite being a construction project beset with issues) is very cool too. I'm looking forward to returning when lockdown is over. I'm looking forward to going anywhere when lockdown is over being honest.
*the tea shop is called 'Cup'.
There is a great little coffee shop/bookshop there as well. And couple of Venezuelan friends of mine run a great Latin American takeaway on Belmont Street. Authentic arepas are magnificent.
Has to be said, their recent hysterical behaviour over inter alia vaccines strongly suggests the first.
No, the vaccines response was because they knew they had screwed up in a matter of the highest importance.
And, although we'll never know, I would not be shocked if there was a gap between what salesmen told the EU Commission and the contractual reality. Not a lie, of course, but incomplete truths, and enough for the EU to be justified in their pissed-offness.
(Simplest explanation of the events is that the EU simply didn't anticipate the details of the Hancock Contact, so didn't ask the right question. And AZ understandably didn't tell.)
Anyone in business knows that that is an all too common occurrence: salesperson sells vision to executive, the contract is reviewed by legal and assumes it matches what was discussed, later much unhappiness that contract and conversation are in no way aligned.
Although in this case I think it was probably more that the EU Commission was naive about the difficulties of ramping up production so fast. I bet Kate Bingham was a hell of a lot more realistic about the risk of delays, since she had good experience of other companies bringing new pharma products on stream. And, to be fair, UvdL has pretty much admitted this, once she'd stopped throwing her toys out of the pram in our direction.
I agree.
The UK's performance - and good sense - in encouraging, supporting and subsidising domestic production via long-term well priced contracts was exemplary. And it severely embarrassed the Commission, who responded very poorly.
What should now happen is that those responsible at the Commission (including the boss herself) are replaced. It was a monumental failure and those involved should pay with their jobs.
This would (hopefully) also allow a resetting of relationship.
Poor Canada, they're in a much worse place in all of this than the EU. Various errors compounded by revenge-motivated export blocking by the Chinese, insofar as I understand it.
And the other places named downstory are Singapore and New Zealand.
Frankly, it's a shameful story with something for everyone.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
Mate, really?
You spent most of the last decade talking about the iniquity of our unelected rulers, you've awoken something in the country, the Royals are rightly next in line.
Except they are not our rulers. They are a national asset.
For me the biggest moment of peril for the monarchy will be with the Queen's passing
It may surprise some I have been a Republican most all my life but of recent years I have recognised the Queen's value and work ethics, but I am no fan of Charles and Camilla
Let's hope she shares your fate and lives well into her 100's then!
For me the biggest moment of peril for the monarchy will be with the Queen's passing
It may surprise some I have been a Republican most all my life but of recent years I have recognised the Queen's value and work ethics, but I am no fan of Charles and Camilla
Charles will end up as a transitional, Edward VII-type, figure, and the monarchy will be fine. In order for it not to be fine, it either needs to commit egregious mistakes or for the public to come to the conclusion that they prefer a different model and are passionate for change - and republicanism, whilst attractive to a significant proportion of the population in theory, is a priority for almost nobody in practice.
Thus all King George VII and Queen Camilla have to do is wave a lot and avoid saying or doing anything too controversial. I imagine that they can probably manage that.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
Mate, really?
You spent most of the last decade talking about the iniquity of our unelected rulers, you've awoken something in the country, the Royals are rightly next in line.
Except they are not our rulers. They are a national asset.
If they're a national asset lets flog them off to the highest bidder.
For me the biggest moment of peril for the monarchy will be with the Queen's passing
It may surprise some I have been a Republican most all my life but of recent years I have recognised the Queen's value and work ethics, but I am no fan of Charles and Camilla
Charles will end up as a transitional, Edward VII-type, figure, and the monarchy will be fine. In order for it not to be fine, it either needs to commit egregious mistakes or for the public to come to the conclusion that they prefer a different model and are passionate for change - and republicanism, whilst attractive to a significant proportion of the population in theory, is a priority for almost nobody in practice.
Thus all King George VII and Queen Camilla have to do is wave a lot and avoid saying or doing anything too controversial. I imagine that they can probably manage that.
Would you consider the Entente Cordiale to be "transitional"?
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
Aberdeen has massively improved since the 80s. Most of the ex-pats have either settled down and got families in the area or have buggered off to other parts of the world. The place has loads of great restaurants and entertainment and has a really nice atmosphere - except perhaps around Bridge Street or the Union Gardens.
My biggest complaint is that the number and choice of bookshops has deteriorated over the years. When I first went there 35 years ago there were 3 big bookshops and a fair few second hand and independents. Now there is one Waterstones which has downsized massively in the last couple of years, a couple of (rather good) charity bookshops and two genuine second hand shops - one on Belmont Street and the other out in Old Aberdeen near the University. The city could support far more I think.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
Mate, really?
You spent most of the last decade talking about the iniquity of our unelected rulers, you've awoken something in the country, the Royals are rightly next in line.
Except they are not our rulers. They are a national asset.
If they're a national asset lets flog them off to the highest bidder.
They're neither.
I disagree with you, but I quite like the idea that if something is an asset, someone should want to buy it. We could apply that to Trident too - would anyone buy that? I don't think anyone would touch that pig in a poke with a bargepole.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
Mate, really?
You spent most of the last decade talking about the iniquity of our unelected rulers, you've awoken something in the country, the Royals are rightly next in line.
Except they are not our rulers. They are a national asset.
If they're a national asset lets flog them off to the highest bidder.
They're neither.
You don't flog national assets. You give them to the National Trust - which is effectively what they are already.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
Mate, really?
You spent most of the last decade talking about the iniquity of our unelected rulers, you've awoken something in the country, the Royals are rightly next in line.
Except they are not our rulers. They are a national asset.
If they're a national asset lets flog them off to the highest bidder.
They're neither.
You don't flog national assets. You give them to the National Trust - which is effectively what they are already.
On topic I go back to what I have said before on this subject and what has also been suggested by Nick Palmer amongst others.
Offer jabs to Ireland if they want them. Then set up a scheme providing vaccinations to poorer Commonwealth countries. At first it might only be the UK funding and providing but then as other richer Commonwealth countries complete their initial vaccination programmes they can join the scheme.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
Aberdeen has massively improved since the 80s. Most of the ex-pats have either settled down and got families in the area or have buggered off to other parts of the world. The place has loads of great restaurants and entertainment and has a really nice atmosphere - except perhaps around Bridge Street or the Union Gardens.
My biggest complaint is that the number and choice of bookshops has deteriorated over the years. When I first went there 35 years ago there were 3 big bookshops and a fair few second hand and independents. Now there is one Waterstones which has downsized massively in the last couple of years, a couple of (rather good) charity bookshops and two genuine second hand shops - one on Belmont Street and the other out in Old Aberdeen near the University. The city could support far more I think.
Does Aberdeen boast any good restaurants featuring Cajun - Creole - Louisiana cuisine? Am asking because of Aberdeen's role as base for off-shore oil rigs.
This is the problematic quote afaics: Jews were beaten in the streets, not by Nazi soldiers but by their neighbors … even by children,” the report said quoting the post.
“Because history is edited, most people today don’t realize that to get to the point where Nazi soldiers could easily round up thousands of Jews, the government first made their own neighbors hate them simply for being Jews. How is that any different from hating someone for their political views.”
IMV hating someone is hating someone. It doesn't really matter why.
But on the left it is totemic that motive matters more than action. (cf the higher sentences for racist/sexuality motivated crimes in the UK vs generic crimes)
Mens Rea has been part of criminal law for a very long time I think. The motive makes the crime in many cases, not just those involving hate.
Yes, but I was thinking not of Mens Rea, but the fact that you have a higher sentence for beating up a black or gay person (as a hate crime) vs beating up someone because they just happen to be in the area.
For me it's the beating up that is the crime that needs punishing, not the "why".
So, take the Stephen Lawrence murder. For you the racist motivation adds not a jot to the weight of the crime?
No. A black man's life is worth the same as a white man's life (or a man, or woman, of any other colour).
A murder should be punished as such.
Of course, the parole board, in due course, will need to consider the probability of reoffending and might come to a different view at that time.
So consider it thus. The Stephen Lawrence murder involved 2 crimes. The first one was just that - murder. The second one was violating in the most evil way imaginable the very principle you set out here. That a black man's life is worth the same as a white man's. This is the aggravating factor.
And that is the fundamental difference between us.
I punish actions. You criminalise thoughts and beliefs.
To quote Bacon: I do not want to open windows into men’s souls
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
The difference being we have no interest in 'punishing' the EU and it does not drive our policy towards them. The opposite is true for the EU. So you are back to having to choose between letting them carry on that way and trying to mollify them (which won't work) or deciding they are not worth the hassle and getting on with our own lives.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
Yes, Peter Roebuck's phrase about Ian Botham springs to mind: 'Warm in friendship; ugly in enmity.' Even if you're not a dreamy europhile, the cold hard calculations of realpolitik would have told you this was Brexit's likely outcome. I suspect a future government of whatever stripe will be able to rebuild bridges, but it won't happen under Boris or perhaps even his Tory successor. There will be some cold, dark years to come.
The breakdown in relationship, if not hostility, between the U.K. and the EU was indeed entirely predictable.
Of course when it was predicted, Brexiters pooh-poohed and said they loved Europe, hated the EU etc. Possibly true, but butters no parsnips in a trade dispute.
I now believe this hostility will actually be permanent, due to the U.K. being a big sooky-baba.
Yes, it is always OUR fault and OUR stupidity and OUR childishness, never theirs. It's so dull. Shut the F up
My earlier post explains why I think it might be the UK’s “fault” although I wouldn’t use that term exactly.
Yes, I know you’re riddled with guilt for voting the country up the river but it’s not too late for enlightenment.
I TOLD you to shut up. Quite clearly, in my prior comment. I therefore do not understand your continued posting?
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
The difference being we have no interest in 'punishing' the EU and it does not drive our policy towards them. The opposite is true for the EU. So you are back to having to choose between letting them carry on that way and trying to mollify them (which won't work) or deciding they are not worth the hassle and getting on with our own lives.
There's a huge difference between just "getting on with our own lives" and "lets do X just because it pisses off the EU".
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
I think the UK is already pretty hostile to the EU. Ultimately a carefully calibrated level of crap is the solution, or at least the probable eventual outcome on my baseline expectation. But it could take years to settle. Disaster isn't in the EU's interest.
But we're not hostile in the same way. Sure some loonies want the EU to meltdown, but most Brits want to live and let live, trade freely, travel happily, they don't want Europeans to get poorer or suffer political crises or whatever
Yet that is, I believe, the attitude now of many senior EU officials and politicians towards the UK. For the sake of The Project, the UK must fail, and if that means Britons suffering, tough shit
Fuck 'em, then
Question is- does the EU actively want to put boulders in the way because we're the UK and we've left? Or is it that they have no intention of lifting a finger to help us?
The first would be bad, and an act of aggression, but the second would be "You wanted to be treated as a separate entity? Welcome to Big School." Not nice, but inevitable. Realpolitik isn't nice.
Basically, anyone who thought that "old boy dining rights" were a thing was a naive fool. And we should note that hardly anyone in Europe is either arguing for kinder treatment of the UK, or to follow our example.
I think they are asking more from the UK than other countries. May they still believe we need them (they are wrong), may be there are some who think they can punish us (they are wrong).
It shows a lack of maturity on their side that they are not looking fit a win-win. But we can wait. And in 5 years it will be different
It should be renamed as 'Don't effing go there, it is miles away from anywhere and it is bloody freezing with no decent mobile coverageshire.'
It's a couple of years since I was there, but unless it's deteriorated considerably I don't think crappy mobile coverage was part of Aberdeen's barbarism!
Aberdeen has massively improved since the 80s. Most of the ex-pats have either settled down and got families in the area or have buggered off to other parts of the world. The place has loads of great restaurants and entertainment and has a really nice atmosphere - except perhaps around Bridge Street or the Union Gardens.
My biggest complaint is that the number and choice of bookshops has deteriorated over the years. When I first went there 35 years ago there were 3 big bookshops and a fair few second hand and independents. Now there is one Waterstones which has downsized massively in the last couple of years, a couple of (rather good) charity bookshops and two genuine second hand shops - one on Belmont Street and the other out in Old Aberdeen near the University. The city could support far more I think.
Does Aberdeen boast any good restaurants featuring Cajun - Creole - Louisiana cuisine? Am asking because of Aberdeen's role as base for off-shore oil rigs.
Surprisingly no. It does have a couple of really good Polish restaurants and some cracking bistro type places - Cafe 52 on The Green is fabulous. But much of the Oilfield influence has already gone from the city, at least as far as 'culture' is concerned. Back in the 80s and early 90s there were large numbers of night clubs and a lot of low end entertainment. Most of that has now gone. It is far more cosmopolitan and a lot nicer for it.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
The difference being we have no interest in 'punishing' the EU and it does not drive our policy towards them. The opposite is true for the EU. So you are back to having to choose between letting them carry on that way and trying to mollify them (which won't work) or deciding they are not worth the hassle and getting on with our own lives.
Look, I don't know what the answer is.
But I do know that we haven't always behaved as well as we might. So we could have let the EU have their Ambassador. It would have cost us nothing, and would have been no more than most other countries do.
I also know that the EU - after behaving appalling badly over vaccines and Northern Ireland -did essentially completely back down.
I'm not suggesting we "take the knee" or anything like that, or even that we agree with things they say. But I do think we can avoid being needlessly antagonistic (see Gove, M).
This is a divorce, and there's always bitterness following a divorce (and probably a desire for the other party to get their comeuppance.) It takes time for the parties to realise they still have to see each other in public, and that the kids need to be brought up.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
Yes, Peter Roebuck's phrase about Ian Botham springs to mind: 'Warm in friendship; ugly in enmity.' Even if you're not a dreamy europhile, the cold hard calculations of realpolitik would have told you this was Brexit's likely outcome. I suspect a future government of whatever stripe will be able to rebuild bridges, but it won't happen under Boris or perhaps even his Tory successor. There will be some cold, dark years to come.
For about 5 years I've been trying to get hold of a copy of Peter Roebuck's classic 1983 book about being a county cricketer over the course of an English cricket season "It Never Rains" but I can't find it anywhere. It's always out of stock.
This idea running through the debate that Britain is replete with mature goodwill to the EU is very amusing. The contribution sections of the Mail, Express and Telegraph have been literally bulging and bursting with hopes for the EU to collapse since the onset of the Eurozone crisis ten years ago now, which then merged into Brexit hostility. This has reflected, broadly, the editorial lines of those papers, and since 2016 the tone of statements from government and the political class, too.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
The difference being we have no interest in 'punishing' the EU and it does not drive our policy towards them. The opposite is true for the EU. So you are back to having to choose between letting them carry on that way and trying to mollify them (which won't work) or deciding they are not worth the hassle and getting on with our own lives.
There's a huge difference between just "getting on with our own lives" and "lets do X just because it pisses off the EU".
Yep, I can't speak for CR but I am not in that camp at all. Indeed I would be much happier if both sides were adult about it and sorted out problems reasonably.
But if they are making it pretty clear that they need to punish us and make sure we fail to some extent 'pour encourager les autres' then I see no reason why we should persist in trying to accommodate them in return. We should do what we think is best for ourselves in the expectation that they are not interested in cooperation.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
How many seats would a party based solely on Thatcherite economics - shorn of the cultural conservatism of which the monarchy is the linchpin - actually win these days? How many would Thatcher herself have won? The loss of the institution would be a major blow to the right-of-centre (and perhaps the centre too), including the people who just want lower taxes and don't much care about anything else. It's a bizarre and self-defeating position for anyone not firmly on the left.
The monarchy isn't the linchpin.
The linchpin issues vary from year to year but the monarchy aren't it.
Look at who Thatcher's key ideological ally across the Pond was. She was able to work very well with Reagan and had a similar political outlook and similar cultural issues - though Reagan didn't require a monarch to get his voters out.
With or without the monarchy this country will always have a centre right and cultural conservativism.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
The EU wants Brexit to be a failure, partly due to their insecurities, partly to encourage the others... and partly too, because they think that the UK now wants the EU to fail.
Peter Bone doesn't get much publicity here: but in the EU they see a member of Parliament of the ruling party calling for the EU to collapse. That is a story, and it gets peoples' backs up just as much there as "punishment beatings" lines from German MEPs get backs up here.
And then there are things like the EU having an Embassy and an Ambassador. The EU says "hang on, pretty much everywhere else allows us representation, and the UK says f*ck off".
It reminds me a little of a friend of a friend, who changed their name to something utterly absurd. Lots of my friends, said "fuck that, that's really stupid. I'm not changing what I call them". And I said "it doesn't cost me anything, and it's important to them, so I'll call them what they want to be called."
So, yeah, the EU is behaving badly. But this is a co-created relationship.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
The difference being we have no interest in 'punishing' the EU and it does not drive our policy towards them. The opposite is true for the EU. So you are back to having to choose between letting them carry on that way and trying to mollify them (which won't work) or deciding they are not worth the hassle and getting on with our own lives.
There's a huge difference between just "getting on with our own lives" and "lets do X just because it pisses off the EU".
No I think he's in the "let's get on with our lives and if that manages to piss the EU off it's a nice bonus" and as it stands basically anything we're doing is pissing them off. They're in a perpetual state of loathing towards the UK for having the temerity to leave their supposed paradise and now run into the arms of APAC countries and it's old allies instead of staying within their orbit.
The worst case scenario for the EU is that the UK formally enters the CPTPP, joins the "quad" and makes it a "pent" (maybe?) with the US, Japan, Australia and India. For them it completely freezes the EU out of a huge, huge part of world affairs that would only be accessible with the UK as a member because of historic links with that part of the world and a historic alliance with Japan which both parties are looking to formalise again.
The UK was always the EU's gateway to APAC, no other European country has the same interests in the region and now the EU will be left behind in the part of the world that is actually going places. They're left having to do grovelling deals with China and licking Putin's arse.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
Yes, Peter Roebuck's phrase about Ian Botham springs to mind: 'Warm in friendship; ugly in enmity.' Even if you're not a dreamy europhile, the cold hard calculations of realpolitik would have told you this was Brexit's likely outcome. I suspect a future government of whatever stripe will be able to rebuild bridges, but it won't happen under Boris or perhaps even his Tory successor. There will be some cold, dark years to come.
For about 5 years I've been trying to get hold of a copy of Peter Roebuck's classic 1983 book about being a county cricketer over the course of an English cricket season "It Never Rains" but I can't find it anywhere. It's always out of stock.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
Though its not true.
Anyway yes eventually we'll reach a position where both sides stand down. We're not there yet.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
The EU wants Brexit to be a failure, partly due to their insecurities, partly to encourage the others... and partly too, because they think that the UK now wants the EU to fail.
Peter Bone doesn't get much publicity here: but in the EU they see a member of Parliament of the ruling party calling for the EU to collapse. That is a story, and it gets peoples' backs up just as much there as "punishment beatings" lines from German MEPs get backs up here.
And then there are things like the EU having an Embassy and an Ambassador. The EU says "hang on, pretty much everywhere else allows us representation, and the UK says f*ck off".
It reminds me a little of a friend of a friend, who changed their name to something utterly absurd. Lots of my friends, said "fuck that, that's really stupid. I'm not changing what I call them". And I said "it doesn't cost me anything, and it's important to them, so I'll call them what they want to be called."
So, yeah, the EU is behaving badly. But this is a co-created relationship.
Good points.
I wasn't sure why we refused to recognise their embassy - the only sensible reason I could think was that we wished to keep it back in to get some small benefit in return when we do give it.
Because we have a view that only countries get full status, not international organisations.
The EU argument that we signed up to it at Lisbon is misleading because we never accredited any representative of an international body as an ambassador
The fact that they go on to question the value of our signature suggests a level of pissed off-ness that is disproportionate
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, so instead it was: fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially when it involves two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
Yes, Peter Roebuck's phrase about Ian Botham springs to mind: 'Warm in friendship; ugly in enmity.' Even if you're not a dreamy europhile, the cold hard calculations of realpolitik would have told you this was Brexit's likely outcome. I suspect a future government of whatever stripe will be able to rebuild bridges, but it won't happen under Boris or perhaps even his Tory successor. There will be some cold, dark years to come.
For about 5 years I've been trying to get hold of a copy of Peter Roebuck's classic 1983 book about being a county cricketer over the course of an English cricket season "It Never Rains" but I can't find it anywhere. It's always out of stock.
So you support the principle of a hereditary head of state then why not a hereditary Prime Minister?
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
How many seats would a party based solely on Thatcherite economics - shorn of the cultural conservatism of which the monarchy is the linchpin - actually win these days? How many would Thatcher herself have won? The loss of the institution would be a major blow to the right-of-centre (and perhaps the centre too), including the people who just want lower taxes and don't much care about anything else. It's a bizarre and self-defeating position for anyone not firmly on the left.
The monarchy isn't the linchpin.
The linchpin issues vary from year to year but the monarchy aren't it.
Look at who Thatcher's key ideological ally across the Pond was. She was able to work very well with Reagan and had a similar political outlook and similar cultural issues - though Reagan didn't require a monarch to get his voters out.
With or without the monarchy this country will always have a centre right and cultural conservativism.
Thatcher and the Queen, certainly and interestingly, didn't get on. Post-1980s Toryism, which includes some radical populist-libertarian strains such as those manifested in Brexit, has in fact had an increasingly uneasy relationship with cultural conservatism.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
I certainly agree about the Gove letter but I wondered if it was part of the negotiation game we've seen so many times.
It occurs to me that the relationship between the EU and the UK is, now, uniquely poisonous in the free world. Why? Because the EU is not neutral or uninterested, vis a vis the UK, it actively wants us to FAIL and SUFFER, so as to discourage any other country from quitting the EU
This is why the EU has reacted with such weird, neurotic insecurity to its relatively poor vaccine performance: because it also says Maybe the Project isn't so great after all. They can't have anyone thinking that, fuck Ireland, draw a border, stop UK vaccine imports, let's make it harder for them
This is also why the EU is being SO obstructive on everything, I can well believe the Tories have made ample mistakes, but it is obvious the EU is being deliberately arsey, wherever and whenever it can. They want Brexit Britain to be a disaster, because they are so insecure over in Brussels.
This presents quite an ongoing problem for the UK. No other democratic entity actively wants the failure of another, as far as I know, especially two such close and important neighbours as the UK and the EU
What can we do? Either we grovel and hope they grow up, or we become as hostile in return - or worse. Try and undermine them. Or we unite with America and invade them.
I think the UK is already pretty hostile to the EU. Ultimately a carefully calibrated level of crap is the solution, or at least the probable eventual outcome on my baseline expectation. But it could take years to settle. Disaster isn't in the EU's interest.
But we're not hostile in the same way. Sure some loonies want the EU to meltdown, but most Brits want to live and let live, trade freely, travel happily, they don't want Europeans to get poorer or suffer political crises or whatever
Yet that is, I believe, the attitude now of many senior EU officials and politicians towards the UK. For the sake of The Project, the UK must fail, and if that means Britons suffering, tough shit
Fuck 'em, then
Question is- does the EU actively want to put boulders in the way because we're the UK and we've left? Or is it that they have no intention of lifting a finger to help us?
The first would be bad, and an act of aggression, but the second would be "You wanted to be treated as a separate entity? Welcome to Big School." Not nice, but inevitable. Realpolitik isn't nice.
Basically, anyone who thought that "old boy dining rights" were a thing was a naive fool. And we should note that hardly anyone in Europe is either arguing for kinder treatment of the UK, or to follow our example.
I think they are asking more from the UK than other countries. May they still believe we need them (they are wrong), may be there are some who think they can punish us (they are wrong).
It shows a lack of maturity on their side that they are not looking fit a win-win. But we can wait. And in 5 years it will be different
With one exception, I don't think the EU is asking more from the UK than other countries. The UK/EU TCA is broadly similar to Canada/EU CETA but goes a bit beyond. TCA is fully Zero Tariffs and Quotas, while CETA still has both. CETA was the most comprehensive FTA struck by the EU before TCA and is a lot more ambitious than other countries' FTAs.
The one area where the EU is asking for more from the UK is in the Northern Ireland Protocol. It is not a wonderful thing, but it is there to try to deal with a real problem. It is not a case of the EU playing games. They would undoubtedly wish not to have that problem too.
Yes the EU needs the new arrangement to be worse for the UK than the one before, but that comes out simply by the EU treating the UK as a third country. Speaking as someone who knew this was going to happen before the referendum if it went Leave and that German car manufacturers etc were never going to materialise, I don't particularly blame the EU. I do somewhat blame Brexiteers for misleading the public but that's all gone now.
Point is WE need to grow up and deal with the situation we put ourselves into.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
The difference being we have no interest in 'punishing' the EU and it does not drive our policy towards them. The opposite is true for the EU. So you are back to having to choose between letting them carry on that way and trying to mollify them (which won't work) or deciding they are not worth the hassle and getting on with our own lives.
Look, I don't know what the answer is.
But I do know that we haven't always behaved as well as we might. So we could have let the EU have their Ambassador. It would have cost us nothing, and would have been no more than most other countries do.
I also know that the EU - after behaving appalling badly over vaccines and Northern Ireland -did essentially completely back down.
I'm not suggesting we "take the knee" or anything like that, or even that we agree with things they say. But I do think we can avoid being needlessly antagonistic (see Gove, M).
This is a divorce, and there's always bitterness following a divorce (and probably a desire for the other party to get their comeuppance.) It takes time for the parties to realise they still have to see each other in public, and that the kids need to be brought up.
Yes, the Gove letter was ridiculous, it had absolutely no subtlety or finesse which is what the situation needs.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I don't see Ireland as an option there. Strange omission, given our closer links and shared land border with Ireland.
I would have said Ireland but otherwise agreed with the list there in pretty much roughly that order, given Ireland wasn't an option I wouldn't have said the EU as a whole.
I would describe it as a country with "Close cultural, historical and political links with Britain" (11%), ahead of the EU at 7%.
More detail on WHO the British would like to share with (TL:DR Not the EU or Ireland):
I’m conflicted about the idea of helping Ireland. Obviously, for two reasons it’s sensible - (1) we have an open land border with them and (2) we need to improve relations with them.
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
If it pisses the EU off we should definitely do it.
This is the feedback loop that I worry about: they behave poorly, we stick our fingers up at them, they get more pissed off and behave even worse...
Isn't this like training a toddler?
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
OK.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
The difference being we have no interest in 'punishing' the EU and it does not drive our policy towards them. The opposite is true for the EU. So you are back to having to choose between letting them carry on that way and trying to mollify them (which won't work) or deciding they are not worth the hassle and getting on with our own lives.
There's a huge difference between just "getting on with our own lives" and "lets do X just because it pisses off the EU".
No I think he's in the "let's get on with our lives and if that manages to piss the EU off it's a nice bonus" and as it stands basically anything we're doing is pissing them off. They're in a perpetual state of loathing towards the UK for having the temerity to leave their supposed paradise and now run into the arms of APAC countries and it's old allies instead of staying within their orbit.
The worst case scenario for the EU is that the UK formally enters the CPTPP, joins the "quad" and makes it a "pent" (maybe?) with the US, Japan, Australia and India. For them it completely freezes the EU out of a huge, huge part of world affairs that would only be accessible with the UK as a member because of historic links with that part of the world and a historic alliance with Japan which both parties are looking to formalise again.
The UK was always the EU's gateway to APAC, no other European country has the same interests in the region and now the EU will be left behind in the part of the world that is actually going places. They're left having to do grovelling deals with China and licking Putin's arse.
Comments
But it would probably drive the EU to even further flights of hysteria. They might even order Ireland to refuse the vaccines if they were offered.
So on the whole, I am inclined to think that when we’ve vaccinated our own population we should look to help those countries that cannot afford them or will have trouble obtaining them. Some of the poorer countries in South America might benefit from them most.
And I certainly strongly believe that we should not be ‘giving’ them to any country that can afford to pay. Why should we subsidise say, a country as wealthy as France when it is their parsimony and lethargy that’s got them into this mess?
https://twitter.com/prospect_uk/status/1359943032930332673
The UK's performance - and good sense - in encouraging, supporting and subsidising domestic production via long-term well priced contracts was exemplary. And it severely embarrassed the Commission, who responded very poorly.
What should now happen is that those responsible at the Commission (including the boss herself) are replaced. It was a monumental failure and those involved should pay with their jobs.
This would (hopefully) also allow a resetting of relationship.
Shame it won't happen.
Below the line comments utterly braindead
2020 = Britons, Stay Home!
The EU seemed to think that they were just buying a standard product off the shelf.
The Queen's various tax dodges and the Prince of Wales anti-Thatcherite policies of not allowing people to own their own homes should be opposed by us all.
If the recall qualifies, the governor could find himself in campaign mode for the next two years while trying to navigate the state through crisis.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/11/gavin-newsom-recall-campaign-california-468537
Many years ago I knew a few remortgaging companies renamed themselves from [Company Name] Finance to [Company Name] Mortgages.
People saw finance as a high interest loan that gambles with the future, whereas mortgage was seen as an investment/risk free thing because people wanted to own their own home.
Brexit has not resulted in societal collapse or anything resembling it, we'll work through all the problems in time, and the Sun will still rise in the morning and set in the evening.
Beyond that, leaving the European Union is a major geopolitical act of reorientation for the UK, which presents challenges and opportunities that Governments well beyond the current one will need to come to terms with. It may be decades before we know how well or otherwise it has worked out.
https://twitter.com/AileenMcHarg/status/1359940626448547845?s=20
I say, no. The UK is big, ugly and smelly enough to take care of itself and, yes, we'll no longer be an EU distribution and trading hub for continental Europe - and there'll be some pain and dislocation as a consequence of market recalibration - but that doesn't mean we can't do perfectly well ourselves through finding a new global niche.
We can't be brought to heel unless we want to be. And I don't think most people here want to be.
I would have said Ireland but otherwise agreed with the list there in pretty much roughly that order, given Ireland wasn't an option I wouldn't have said the EU as a whole.
The primary reason RBS Group changed their name to the NatWest Group was because the public associate RBS with the bank bailouts during the GFC but they don't associate NatWest with that.
Was a real nightmare for the debt collection departments in Brindley Place.
Customers were like 'We bailed you out when you were in trouble, how about doing the same for us?'
The RBS teams got that but not the NatWest teams.
Remain want to share more
But the oldest group wants to share much more than than the middle group
Some very selfish blairite lefties around
My previous visits in I think 2006 and 2008 were marred by poor mobile coverage but in those days data usage wasn't much of an issue.
People who've lost their minds like UVDL need to burn through their anger before they can calm down. We need to just deal with it as it is, not as we want it to be.
At creation "Standard" meant "setting the standard" as we still use in for example "Gold Standard". It later came to mean standard, in the sense of ordinary, as in "bog standard".
It is how language evolves, by hyperbolisation, and euphemism.
*the tea shop is called 'Cup'.
Rich countries tapping Covax... That's very poor.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55932997
Good behaviour, reward. Bad behaviour, punishment or censure.
I'm wholly up for positive engagement with the EU. But they need to know that if they act like dicks then we'll act like dicks too. So they need to start acting reasonably for a constructive relationship.
I've honestly lost all "fear" of the EU. The country hasn't collapsed (and it won't collapse) - even with a pretty hard Brexit life is going on pretty much the same as before for me and the vast majority of people here. It's fine. Meanwhile their paranoid, insecure, febrile and totally OTT reaction to us doing better on vacinnes to them tells me they're very insecure and rather scared - which means they're secretly far weaker than they let on. Chortle.
So, yeah - do your worst EU. When you've grown up and got over yourselves (not least because no-one else on the continent wants to leave, or seriously would leave - even if we totally knocked it out the park - because it wouldn't make sense) then we can talk as constructive neighbours who help each other out.
It may surprise some I have been a Republican most all my life but of recent years I have recognised the Queen's value and work ethics, but I am no fan of Charles and Camilla
Its an all dogs are animals but not all animals are dogs problem.
The rest of it is because values.
By the way, I would like to reiterate that MaxPB's idea of us making ROI part of our vaccination programme and offering it as part of our travel area for people to go on their holibobs (and vice versa) was an excellent idea that someone should wisper in Bojo's ear.
It would be popular with everyone - EUphiles who can cross over to the Emerald Isle for a breath of EU civilisation and a chance to spend wonderful euros, Scottish nationalists who can go over and bore people in pubs about the hated English, people who just want to 'fly' and go somewhere different and would miss this otherwise, the British tourism industry who'd get an influx of Irish tourists, Belfast, who'd get lots of people visiting the Titanic exhibition - it would really save summer for many.
Muslim conquerors did have a bit of a tendency to build on existing holy sites in order to stamp out existing religions. The Hagia Sofia and Al Asqa mosque on Solomon temple being other examples. Mind you, Christians have done the same too, such as In Andulucia.
Pretty much guarantees a future flash point.
Frankly, it's a shameful story with something for everyone.
Thus all King George VII and Queen Camilla have to do is wave a lot and avoid saying or doing anything too controversial. I imagine that they can probably manage that.
They're neither.
https://twitter.com/jamesdoleman/status/1359944354790572032?s=20
My biggest complaint is that the number and choice of bookshops has deteriorated over the years. When I first went there 35 years ago there were 3 big bookshops and a fair few second hand and independents. Now there is one Waterstones which has downsized massively in the last couple of years, a couple of (rather good) charity bookshops and two genuine second hand shops - one on Belmont Street and the other out in Old Aberdeen near the University. The city could support far more I think.
Offer jabs to Ireland if they want them. Then set up a scheme providing vaccinations to poorer Commonwealth countries. At first it might only be the UK funding and providing but then as other richer Commonwealth countries complete their initial vaccination programmes they can join the scheme.
Richer countries can sort themselves out.
But what if the EU is thinking the way you're thinking?
What if they think they are merely replying to our provocations in kind?
Take the Michael Gove letter a week ago. In tone I thought that was needlessly antagonistic, and could easily have said exactly the same things in a more diplomatic way. It reminded me of Trump demanding that the Germans "paid" their 2%. You get, as they say, more flies with honey than vinegar.
I'm not saying the EU are behaving well. They're clearly not.
But this is not just a case of us only responding to them. And it is not a case that only they can lower the tension. That's the logic of the Northern Ireland Troubles where each offence causes a retaliation, and it's always the other guy who needs to stand down.
I punish actions. You criminalise thoughts and beliefs.
To quote Bacon: I do not want to open windows into men’s souls
@Casino_Royale is very much in the latter camp.
It shows a lack of maturity on their side that they are not looking fit a win-win. But we can wait. And in 5 years it will be different
But I do know that we haven't always behaved as well as we might. So we could have let the EU have their Ambassador. It would have cost us nothing, and would have been no more than most other countries do.
I also know that the EU - after behaving appalling badly over vaccines and Northern Ireland -did essentially completely back down.
I'm not suggesting we "take the knee" or anything like that, or even that we agree with things they say. But I do think we can avoid being needlessly antagonistic (see Gove, M).
This is a divorce, and there's always bitterness following a divorce (and probably a desire for the other party to get their comeuppance.) It takes time for the parties to realise they still have to see each other in public, and that the kids need to be brought up.
But if they are making it pretty clear that they need to punish us and make sure we fail to some extent 'pour encourager les autres' then I see no reason why we should persist in trying to accommodate them in return. We should do what we think is best for ourselves in the expectation that they are not interested in cooperation.
The linchpin issues vary from year to year but the monarchy aren't it.
Look at who Thatcher's key ideological ally across the Pond was. She was able to work very well with Reagan and had a similar political outlook and similar cultural issues - though Reagan didn't require a monarch to get his voters out.
With or without the monarchy this country will always have a centre right and cultural conservativism.
The worst case scenario for the EU is that the UK formally enters the CPTPP, joins the "quad" and makes it a "pent" (maybe?) with the US, Japan, Australia and India. For them it completely freezes the EU out of a huge, huge part of world affairs that would only be accessible with the UK as a member because of historic links with that part of the world and a historic alliance with Japan which both parties are looking to formalise again.
The UK was always the EU's gateway to APAC, no other European country has the same interests in the region and now the EU will be left behind in the part of the world that is actually going places. They're left having to do grovelling deals with China and licking Putin's arse.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Never-Rains-Cricketers-Lot/dp/0047960965/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Roebuck+it+never+rains&qid=1613074319&sr=8-1#ace-3536363283
Anyway yes eventually we'll reach a position where both sides stand down. We're not there yet.
The EU argument that we signed up to it at Lisbon is misleading because we never accredited any representative of an international body as an ambassador
The fact that they go on to question the value of our signature suggests a level of pissed off-ness that is disproportionate
Or is that cheating?
In other news, someone found Eagles' gym kit
https://twitter.com/Pulpstar/status/1359956633766526990
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/tory-police-minister-attacks-lockdown-23302250
The one area where the EU is asking for more from the UK is in the Northern Ireland Protocol. It is not a wonderful thing, but it is there to try to deal with a real problem. It is not a case of the EU playing games. They would undoubtedly wish not to have that problem too.
Yes the EU needs the new arrangement to be worse for the UK than the one before, but that comes out simply by the EU treating the UK as a third country. Speaking as someone who knew this was going to happen before the referendum if it went Leave and that German car manufacturers etc were never going to materialise, I don't particularly blame the EU. I do somewhat blame Brexiteers for misleading the public but that's all gone now.
Point is WE need to grow up and deal with the situation we put ourselves into.